


Yedid Nefesh.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Adar Crack, Alternate Universe - Jewish, Alternate Universe - Modern, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Yeshiva, Basheret, Halacha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 16:11:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3417086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It is good for a man to find his basheret. How long may he search for her?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yedid Nefesh.

**Author's Note:**

> For Adar Crack, some ruminations on the halachos of soulmates. Glossary at the end. The 40 day bas kol is an actual real thing (Sotah 2A/Sanhedrin 22A), the rest of it is completely made up.

1.

Marius is late.

"Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: Forty days before a child is formed, the time of conception, a bas kol proclaims who is the one destined to be married to them, and another bas kol goes out when the two neshamas meet. It is good for a man to find his basheret. How long may he search for her? Until his beard grows in. Which for some of us was, like, high school."

Marius is _so_ late.

"And certain people here are never going to manage that."

"Excuse me, if you have nothing to contribute-- Rabbi Tarfon said, until Pesach of the second year. Rabbi Eliezer said, until Yom Kippur of the third year. Um. Tosfos talks about Hataras Nedarim and Kol Nidrei, which is really interesting and I'll get back to it in a minute. Rabbi Akiva said, not even one year."

Marius tries to slip in the back without being noticed. He knocks something over and ducks down, hoping no one saw.

"No one should ever listen to Rabbi Akiva, he actually did marry his basheret. And anyway, Rambam thinks it's all nonsense, and if it's not good enough for Rambam, it's not good enough for me. I don't know we're learning this in the first place."

"Rav Moshe Feinstein," Bahorel begins, very heated, and then everyone starts talking all at once. Marius licks his lips and opens his mouth, figuring this is a good time to make his announcement, but then Enjolras hits the table to try to bring the group back to order. 

"You've all gotten far too ahead. 'How long may he search for her' -- this is probably also 'how far', if he shaved at the start of the journey, he has to stop when he has a beard, so that's even less time than Rabbi Akiva gives."

"So our poor beardless Marius is fine then -- yes, Marius, _we can see you_."

Marius stands up. His face is burning. "I found her!" he blurts out.

You could hear a pin drop in the room, and then, abruptly, you can't.

Uh. That wasn't how Marius wanted that to go.

 

2.

Marius did not intend to find his basheret when he left for yeshiva that morning, but he had to stop at Rabbi Lebovitz's to return a sefer, and then he started off in the wrong direction on his way out, and then he got very lost, and then he had ducked into an entryway to check the map on his phone when he spotted his basheret across the street. There was no mistaking the bas kol thundering in Marius's ears.

He then dropped his phone.

When he looked up again, she was gone.

 

3.

"How do you lose your basheret?" Grantaire asks. He's finding this much too amusing. Marius is feeling faint.

"I don't know! She wasn't there anymore."

Courfeyrac pats Marius on the back. "There, there, we'll find her. There aren't that many girls in the world. What was she wearing?"

"Um." Marius closes his eyes and thinks. "A dark blue shirt with a long black skirt." He hiccups. "She had the most beautiful neshama I have ever seen, and I'm never going to find her again!"

Courfeyrac pats him just a little bit harder. "How old was she?"

Marius opens his eyes. "Um. About our age?" He looks around the room at his friends, from Enjolras, who doesn't look like he's old enough to learn in a Beis Midrash, to poor bald Bossuet, whose scalp is visible even beneath his hat, and then to Bahorel, whose age no one is quite sure about. "She's probably out of high school?" Marius tries again. "Maybe seminary?"

Courfeyrac lifts his eyes to the heavens to search for salvation.

Enjolras is never one to waste an opportunity. "Courfeyrac will look for her. Until he finds her, we are going to learn taharas hamishpacha. You must be prepared."

The rest of Marius's friends take this opportunity to contribute their own suggestions, all which frankly sound better than taharas hamishpacha, but Marius just buries his head in his hands and tunes it out. They'll hash it out and then it'll be okay, they'll find her, Courfeyrac will find her. Marius has complete faith in Courfeyrac; even if he's delayed, Courfeyrac's never let Marius down.

Before Courfeyrac leaves, he whispers to Marius, "It's okay, we'll find her soon, I promise." Then he thinks for a moment and conscientiously adds, "bli neder."

 

4.

Marius goes to college at night, where he's pre-law and sometimes doesn't remember to switch off the part of him that's switched on during shiurim. All the other bochurim on that schedule do so much better than he does, but Marius always finds himself thinking about college while studying gemara, and worrying over gemara when he should be thinking about his secular classes.

Now, though? Now he's just a wreck in both.

Grantaire and Enjolras are recreating Beis Hillel vs. Beis Shammai about minutia of basherets that aren't even relevant anymore, and Marius learned all of this years ago and still kinda remembers some of it, and so he's sort of following it? He could probably give an opinion, but every time he closes his eyes, he sees her. He sees her and then he sees himself losing her because he never finds her again. He is never going to find her. Courfeyrac keeps sending him smilie face emoticons and telling him to keep his hopes up and keep davening, but it's been a week. A whole week! Anything can happen in a week! Everything can happen in a week! Marius is doomed. 

"--if he's already married when he finds her. Either he must marry her, he's not permitted to marry her, there's a lot of stuff that no one cares about because we don't do multiple wives these days, but, hey, at least everyone agrees he is absolutely not allowed to divorce his wife to marry her. If _she's_ already married, he's out of luck and can't even marry his kids to hers, it's a no go. If he's her husband's commanding officer, he is not allowed to send him to the front lines to get him killed just so he can marry her, _Dovid HaMelech_ , that's a cold and broken hallelujah of a hell no right there. But this entire thing is bullshit and not relevant, since the halacha these days is basically, who cares about basheret, you've got to stop looking and start getting married."

Grantaire takes a bow and jumps off the table to a splattering of applause. 

"So, nu, when are you going to be getting married?" Combeferre asks him, and the smile drops off of Grantaire's face.

"The world is too full of sinas chinam," Grantaire says. "My face is uglier than my midos, I have inconvenient relatives, and I don't learn well. Send me my basheret, it's my only chance."

Marius makes himself stand up. He walks over to Grantaire and drapes himself over his back. "It's all right," he says to the broad muscle of Grantaire's shoulder. "We'll die alone and unloved together."

"That's the spirit," Grantaire says.

 

5.

 _The shechina dwells where two neshamas are joined as one_ , Marius's bookmark informs him. It's from one of the societies that purport to help you find your basheret, but mostly they just make their own shidduchim. There's a phone number on the back and Marius is thinking about calling them. Maybe he should call them? Your basheret is a true match, Hashem made you for each other. But you can still be happy with someone a human set you up with. You can even fall in love.

But even being in love with someone doesn't mean you can make a life with them. With a basheret, Marius wouldn't have any doubts. He'd be able to build a bayis ne'eman b'yisroel with her, and nothing his Grandfather would say could change that. He would be with his other half and he'd never have any doubts that they were meant to be together. Your basheret is no guarantee of a happy life, even if she does agree to marry you, but it would be enough for Marius. He could weather any storm with his basheret, because he'd always know that they were meant for each other. They were meant to be. Any argument is temporary in the face of shamayim. 

It's been four months.

Marius's situation has given everyone a practical problem to chew over. He saw her, but he didn't talk to her. He knows what she looks like, but not her name. It's not like something happened and there's a sofek about if she's still alive, she's _probably_ still alive and out there somewhere. She might even be looking for him! Or maybe she's already married, or maybe she's not interested in getting married yet and will track him down when she is, there are a lot of possibilities here, and not all of them are good. Marius thinks he'd be okay if she were married or not interested in marrying him. At least then he'd know.

Marius's kitzur tells him that after one year, he has to act like it never happened and move on. He can't imagine doing that. He's grateful that the Rosh Yeshiva is taking his time hashing it out, because the longer he waits to tell Marius that he needs to stop moping and move on, the more time Marius has to find her. The Rosh Yeshiva's contacted all the girls schools in the area, asking if one of their students heard a bas kol recently or knows anyone who has. There have been e-mails sent out to say tehillim for Marius. His grandfather even sent him a letter that Marius declined to read, but his friends said was mostly supportive. There's not much else he can do but wait and slowly go out of his mind.

Five months.

"Lo b'shamayim he," Courfeyrac says ominously and then sets Marius up with his cousin. Marius protests that Courfeyrac's the worst chavrusa ever, but goes on the date anyway. He ends up flipping over the soup bowl with his elbow. There is no second date, but, alas, the floodgates have already been opened. Everyone gets in on it, even the kid that Courfeyrac is tutoring for his bar mitzvah.

This is how Marius meets Eponine, who goes on three dates with him before telling him that she's not going to waste herself on a man who is still pining over his lost basheret. She pities him, which is depressing, but she offers to help him find his basheret, which Marius appreciates. It seems like he's the only one who hasn't given up on finding her again.

And then, right before Pesach, Eponine asks Marius to meet her at the shawarma place and Marius walks in the door and--

\--and there she is.

Marius doesn't think he breathes. He definitely doesn't blink. He doesn't hear the bas kol this time, because that only ever happens once in your life, but he thinks he can feel it reverberate in his bones. She probably feels it too because she locks her eyes on his and she stands up to meet him and doesn't seem like she realizes she's moving and then they are less than a foot away from each other and Marius blurts out, "I'm Marius Pontmercy, your basheret."

And she laughs and she says, "I'm Cosette."

**Author's Note:**

> Glossary:
> 
> Bar mitzvah: Coming of age for a 13 year old boy  
> Bas kol: heavenly voice.  
> Basheret: soulmate  
> Bayis ne'eman b'yisroel: an enduring Jewish household  
> Beis Hillel: the school of Hillel  
> Beis Midrash: in this case, a post-high school Jewish studies program  
> Beis Shammai: the school of Shammai  
> Bli neder: without making a vow  
> Bochurim: in this case, yeshiva students  
> Chavrusa: study partner  
> Davening: praying  
> Dovid HaMelech: King David.  
> Gemara: A compendium of oral law/tradition, that was codified and written down  
> Halacha: Jewish law  
> Hashem: God  
> Hataras Nedarim: a part of the pre-Rosh Hashana/pre-Yom Kippur services regarding the annulment of vows  
> Kitzur: short for Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, a condensed summary of halacha based on the Shulchan Aruch  
> Kol Nidrei: a part of the Yom Kippur services regarding the annulment of vows  
> Lo b'shamayim he: it [the Torah/Jewish law] is not in Heaven, [it is on Earth.]  
> Midos: character traits/attributes  
> Neshama: soul  
> Nu: well?  
> Pesach: Passover  
> Rosh Hashana: Jewish New Year  
> Rosh Yeshiva: the head of the yeshiva  
> Sefer: book  
> Shamayim: heaven  
> Shechina: God's soul/presence  
> Shidduchim: arranged marriages  
> Shiurim: lectures/classes  
> Sinas chinam: baseless hatred  
> Sofek: doubt  
> Taharas hamishpacha: family purity laws  
> Tehillim: Psalms  
> Yedid Nefesh: Beloved of the soul  
> Yeshiva: institution of Jewish learning  
> Yom Kippur: the Day of Atonement


End file.
